


By Pride Rise

by FenVallas



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, M/M, Universe Alteration, longform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-20
Updated: 2015-08-20
Packaged: 2018-04-16 06:15:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4614339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FenVallas/pseuds/FenVallas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Revasel Lavellan, the new First of Clan Lavellan, checks on the saftey a series of catacombs her people hold dear, she discovers a man named Solas who will inevitably alter not only the course of her life, but the lives of everyone she holds dear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By Pride Rise

Revasel tucked her traveling cloak more tightly about her, stepping lightly over the debris littering the wooded path. The Blight in Ferelden a few years ago had changed everything, and this path, once so well hidden, was now trampled by the footprints of hundreds of _shemlen_ refugees. There was something unsettling about disarray in a place that had so recently been seen most often by Elven eyes.

She supposed it was something of an unpleasant reminder that the word was ruled by _shemlen_ , that her people were vagrants who took to the abandoned highways of the world because they had nowhere else to go. No matter how far the Elves vanished into wild, untouched places, there was no place the humans wouldn’t eventually travel and no place they wouldn’t eventually conquer.

A fine mist clung to her skin and hair as she walked with a delicacy those who had used this path before didn’t seem capable of managing, moving soundlessly toward her destination. The Keeper had sent her here to check on the ruins deeper in the small forest that her clan sometimes took to when tensions where high between the nearest city-state and its neighbor.

This place was all that remained of a great forest that had once spanned much of the Free Marches, protecting her people from threats the outside world presented. It sheltered a few of the ruins that her clan protected, the remnants of what was speculated to be the entrance to a once great underground network of tombs where the sleeping dead of the _Elvhen_ were enshrined. With the influx of people through the Marches on their way to Kirkwall and other cities in the region, there was some concern that raiders had come to desecrate the sacred burial grounds of her ancestors.

Artifacts often sold for a great amount of money to the right person, especially because the ruins of her people tended to be filled with precious gems and gold, and even more valuable arcane secrets. It was those secrets that Deshanna was most interested in protecting, and in this, at least, Revasel agreed with her. They had already lost too much to lose what yet slept within the ruins of their ancestors, whatever it was, especially if they were going to lose it to the _shemlen_.

Her staff struck the ground, helping her footing remain sure as she descended farther into the forest, vying off the beaten path to delve into shadowy unmarked depths. There was little evidence than anything here had been bent, broken or crushed, which filled her with a certain kind of hope. Desperation often drove people to incredible ends, but apparently the hungry refugees from Ferelden weren’t the right kind of desperate to take their chances in the forest with the wolves.

With one hand, she grasped one of the many talismans she wore about her neck, attempting to draw some strength from the raven’s feather, as if it could reveal to her secret pathways through the trees. She already knew her way, though it had been at least a year since she had last walked this path, finding it little changed despite the passage of time. Briefly, she wondered if her ancestors even noticed the changing of the leaves from green to gold in the autumn, contemplated whether or not they felt the chill of winter, or if they simply ignored the changes in the world about them, immovable and eternal through the storm of the years.

She slipped underneath a low hanging bough and stumbled down a ferny hill into a small, grassy clearing where the entrance to the catacombs was hidden. Here, the barest sunlight filtered through the trees, grey in the still-early light of morning. Everything still smelled cold and crisp, almost clean, before the heat made the world smell grassy and rich. There was a stillness that made her shiver, and she had the distinct sensation she was being watched, though she quickly pushed the thought away to focus on the task at hand.

Stepping lightly, Revasel knelt in the dirt, brushing her hand over the stone, her brows knitting together when she found the brush that had been placed over the entrance disturbed. There had been no signs of anyone coming here from the direction of the Dalish path, which meant she may have to track the intruder through the forest, something she had neither the time nor the resources to commit to.

Behind her a twig snapped, a quiet sound that made her spine go as rigid as if it had been the sound of a sword being drawn. Slowly, she began to stand, gripping her staff so tightly that her knuckles turned pale against the wood. Her every move was measured as she turned about to face the source of the sound, praying that who or whatever had made the noise was still there.

Staring at her from across the clearing was a man.

It was his eyes she had noticed first, staring at her from the shadow of the trees with the intensity of a cloudless blue sky that threatened to swallow you whole. Alone they would have been frightening, but they were set in a face that was little more than a skull, the long strands of matted red hair hanging about his head giving him a ragged appearance. His clothing hung from him like a sack, making him look far smaller than he actually was, though she could already tell he was at least half a head taller than she was.

His identity as one of her people was betrayed by the way his eyes captured and held the light when he shifted, moving cautiously toward her a half step at a time. Revasel was frozen in the moment, save for her eyes, which darted to the sides of his head as if to confirm his identity. His ears stuck out through his long strands of thinning hair, which for some reason made her heart race more, if only because of the absence of _vallaslin_ upon his face.

He froze a few paces from her, looking down into her eyes, which weren’t shy as they traced the shape of Falon’Din’s branches. She almost thought he would reach out with his long, bony fingers to touch her, but he was clutching something so closely to his chest that she feared it might be a child at first until the glint of metal caught her eye.

For a minute, she almost thought there was something anguished in his expression, but it was gone a moment later as his brows furrowed furiously. He seemed to be concentrating, his mouth opening and closing as if he was searching for the words to say but none would come out.

“ _Ma halani_ ,” he finally managed, reaching out a hand and letting it fall on her shoulder, his fingers digging into the fabric there. “Please.”

She looked to his claw-like hand and then into his face, confused a bit frightened. He hadn’t appeared to have come from anywhere nearby and was speaking a pidgin of Common and Elvish, but he had no vallaslin to identify him as Dalish. Was he refugee from the south? Had he somehow been abandoned here? Why did he look like he had been starved?

“I…” she swallowed thickly, hesitantly reaching out to him. “Why are you here? Who are you?”

Frustration flashed over his features, and his lips drew back into a silent snarl, his head bowing in something like defeat. “Not now. _Halani_. Help. **_Please_**.”

Revasel took a breath to steady herself, nodded, and then threw his arm over his shoulder. He was lighter than she expected, light enough that she felt maybe she could have picked him up in spite of his height. But there was so little to him left, so little that she was afraid she would break his bones if she pulled too hard on his arm.

He grunted, and she looked toward him to see if he was okay, finding him already stared at her, teeth bared into a grimace. “ _Ma serannas_.”

She nodded, trying to concentrate on walking him back to camp. If they were attacked, she hoped he understood if she dropped him to defend them and didn’t take too much offense to any bruises and scrapes. Nervous, she began to babble, a habit that she had been trying to break recently now that Deshanna had started to allocate more duties to her.

“I have no idea what I’m going to tell everyone back at camp,” she took a breath and pulled them forward, trying to find a level area so she could pull him back toward the road. “I went to check on the entrance to the catacombs and I’m coming back with a half-dead man. I have no idea what my Keeper is going to say, though I doubt she’ll turn you away. She’s not a cruel woman.”

“Dalish?” he asked, stumbling slightly as she pulled him over some tree roots.

“Yes. You’re honestly lucky I was here to find you. What would have done otherwise?” She kept her eyes through the trees, veering toward the right to head back toward the Dalish trail where her people had marked the trees; she had no desire to get lost.

He snorted in response, his grasp on her tightening as he was jolted by a fallen tree branch. “ _Suledin_. I would find a city. A Chantry.”

“Are you Andrastian?” She asked him, almost automatically, pausing to tuck her staff into her pack so that she could support him better.

She’d met Elves who were Andrastian before, many of them who had converted once they remained in the camp for more than a year. Many of those men and women now wore the _vallaslin_ proudly, just as Dalish as any of the Elves who had been born there, especially Terian and his thick Starkhaven accent.

“No,” the waif huffed, as if insulted by the very notion. “Chantries offer charity.” He made a noise that was almost a laugh. “I need charity.”

She couldn’t help but agree. “You’re almost dead, and in need of help. How did you even end up there? And what are you holding? Did you rescue it from the ruins?”

In response to her words, he tucked the object more closely to his chest and heaved a sigh. “I can’t recall, but yes, presumably.”

He couldn’t recall? As dreadful as he looked, she honestly couldn’t blame him for forgetting. There was no way of knowing how old or young he was, she thought as the struggled through the underbrush together, and no way of knowing how long he had been there without food or any real way to sustain himself. The farther they got away from where she had found him, and the less she looked directly at his face, the better she felt for having helped him.

She fell silent, more assured in her actions than she had been in quite some time, pressing forward through the trees. It seemed to take four times as long to make it back to the path as it had to leave it, and by the time she finally stumbled out onto the _shemlen_ trampled road, the sun was high in the sky and she had worked up a sweat. The man clung to her, breathing heavily and leaning into her shoulder enough that he might have toppled her over if he were at anything resembling a healthy weight.

For a moment she paused, feeling the breeze where the trees were not so close together, her ears pricked for any signs that they were not alone. Fortunately, the world about them was not filled with the sort of noise that meant there were travels. There were no carts to disturb the sound of the wind through the leaves and the distant rustling of brush as some creature mired about in search of food, or to drown out the chirping of the merry birds.

“You’re almost fortunate that you didn’t need to find a Chantry,” said Revasel, pointing them toward the east after they had both caught their breath. “I doubt even a _shemlen_ would turn his back on you looking like that, but you never know.”

“Seeking out a large city would be foolish,” the man replied, his face nearly colorless, something that she hadn’t noticed in the grey morning light. “A smaller town with a smaller Chantry, but not so small that one more mouth would drain resources.”

“Do you know much about city living?” She had seen enough of Starkhaven and Wycome to guess at how beggars might crowd the Chantry gates for handouts, and how a single Elven man might be lost among those figures. “Were you born there, in the city?”

“No,” he shook his head, something that seemed to take more effort than it was worth. “I was born…” There was a strange hesitance to his voice, as if he were searching for the correct words to say, “On a farm. But I have seen the city.”

Her image of the stranger was growing ever more bizarre. A man who knew the cities, but was savvy enough to navigate the countryside and find himself outside of an Elven ruin where something had happened to strand him. He spoke a bit of the language of The People, but also spoke Common in an accent that she couldn’t quite identify, and wore what was left of his hair in long strands. His clothing, too, was bizarre and oddly nondescript, though not in a style she had ever seen before.

She was half-tempted to comment on it, but it didn’t seem like the best idea at the moment. Whoever he was, whoever he came from, those were questions for when she wasn’t dragging him through a wooded path toward her people’s well-hidden encampment. As it was, he seemed to be losing his footing more frequently, his face growing increasingly more pale every moment that slipped by.

For a second, she was almost afraid he wouldn’t make it.

But then she delved off onto a small path, and in a few short moments that seemed to drag on for an eternity, her clan’s _aravels_ came into sight.

“Hold on just a moment,” she muttered, hoisting him past the perimeter guards, mindful of his grunt and muttered “ _fenehdis_.”

They drew looks, because how could they not notice a man who looked like little more than a ghoul? Revasel kept her head held high, though, confident in her actions as she walked toward Keeper Deshanna, who was speaking to Stoyrteller Illwen. The two of them turned, Illwen’s eyebrows arching up, though no judgement was upon his face. The Keeper, however…

“Revasel, what is this?” Deshanna’s brown eyes were as severe as they always were, Andruil’s bow bending as her brow furrowed. There was a great deal of accusation in her voice, and it carried across the camp, drawing the attention of anyone who wasn’t already paying close attention.

From the side of her eye she caught her brother, sitting upon one of the crates they used to carry goods from camp to camp, pausing in mending a fishing net to look out at the confrontation with his dark eyes. There was something about having him there that always made her stronger, more resistant to the criticism of Deshanna, who was staring her down in this instant as if she had done the unforgivable.

“It’s what it looks like,” Revasel straightened her spine and held the man up higher so that everyone could get a good look at him. “I went to check on the catacombs, as instructed, and found this man, barely alive. He asked me for help, so I helped him.”

Deshanna’s frown lessened only slightly as she finally took a proper look at the man, who had raised himself up enough to look into her eyes. Revasel watched the exchange with a growing sense of curiosity as she realized the man would not be cowed in the slightest. By and large Deshanna was a competent leader who put her people before her own needs, but she was suspicious of strangers, something that one **_absolutely_** had to be as an Elf in modern Thedas.

“What were you doing so near the sacred ruins of our people? And what is that you hold in your hand?” Deshanna leaned on the staff she held, glancing toward the Storyteller as if for answers.

The man shrugged, and then turned his attention back to the stranger who was still staring at Deshanna with a blank expression and his oddly piercing blue eyes. “I cannot recall what I was doing so near the catacombs. I can only imagine I recovered this from their depths at great risk to life and limb, though for what reason I cannot possibly imagine.”

“You must have suffered a great deal to forget your own motivations.” The Keeper drummed her long fingers against her staff and considered him as she had once considered Revasel after she had snuck off to go on a hunt instead of attending to her duties. “And why have you wasted away to nothing?”

The waif looked about ready to respond, his eyes flashing hotly, when there was the sound of general rustling from the gathered Clan. She almost knew before she felt the man lifted from her shoulders what had transpired, but then again, Revasel knew her brother better than she knew anyone else.

“With all due respect, this is ludicrous. _Absolutely crazy_. You honestly can’t be interrogating a **_dying_** man, Keeper.” Mahvir’s voice was just loud enough to be heard, but all eyes were turned to him regardless. “Look at him. He’s barely there. We should help him and then question his intentions.”

Keeper Deshanna pressed her lips together, but her face quickly softened and she sighed. “Very well. Take him to your _aravel, da’len_. Watch over him. It is not proper for The People to abandon one of their own in need.” She waved her hand to dismiss him, her eyes falling upon Revasel. “In the meantime, I want a full report on the state of the catacombs.”

Revasel nodded, though she paid more attention to her brother and the man, who had gone limp against Mahvir’s shoulder. Perhaps exhaustion had finally claimed him, which might be for the best after all.

At least ** _one_** of them could escape Deshanna’s scrutiny.

* * *

 

Everything hurt, and that was his first indication that he was waking from an irritatingly dreamless sleep. Moving was a burden, one that left him breathing heavily from even his meager attempts to right himself in the small, stifling hot space he found himself within. For a moment he had no sense of orientation, his breath coming quick and hard through his teeth, but he quickly recalled the trek through the forest and his entrance into the camp of the Dalish Clan.

Curling in on himself, he opened his eyes and stared at his hands, resting on the wooden floor. A swell of emotion threatened to overcome him at the sight, his long fingers nearly skeletal, frightening and ghoul-like.

He had known when he had slipped into the Long Sleep that he would pay the price if he ever woke. Sustaining oneself was not the same as thriving despite the passage of years, but he did not think he had been truly prepared for what recovery had entailed. Now, lying prone on the floor thousands of years later, his heart thundering in his ears like the shudder of a Titan’s breath, he finally realized the extent of the damage he had done to himself.

“ _Fenehdis_.”

His voice hissed through the shadowy interior of what the Keeper had called an “ _aravel_ ”, a word that was a hodge-podge amalgamation of words whose full meaning had been lost long ago. It sounded loud, louder than he would have wished but not loud enough to drown out the hollow ache in his stomach that extended to his bones and seemed to permeate his very being.

A flash of lifeless eyes and haunted faces danced on the edge of his memory, burning ghost-like in the periphery of his vision. He pushed the visions away, trying to focus on the feeling of furs wrapped about his body instead of the phantoms of a past he could never reclaim. But the memories were overwhelming, and he found his throat growing tight even as he fought against their tide.

He was fortunate that the other occupant of the _aravel_ chose that moment to announce themselves.

“Oh, you’re finally awake. I was worried.” The voice was low and soft, accompanied by a cool hand that pressed itself to his forehead and drew away matted strands of hair. “I’ve treated starvation before, when people from the Alienage have fled to our camp, but nothing this severe. I wasn’t sure you would wake.”

He shifted in his furs, kicking them away to stare up into the face of his caretaker, a young man with Sylaise’s _vallaslin_ lining his face in a bright blue pigment. There was something about his dark eyes that was kind, that reminded him of green eyes set in a different face long ago, but there was still the unmistakable roundness of youth in these features that made their owner look almost naïve.

“I’m much more resilient than my current state would suggest,” he said, reaching up a hand as if to run it through his hair but deciding it wasn’t worth the effort.

It fell back to his chest with a thud.

“I’ve noticed.” The young man offered him a gentle smile and withdrew his hand only to help support the older man into a sitting position. “We need to get something nutritious into you if you’re going to have any hope of recovering at all and—Oh.” The young man paused as he propped his new patient, laughing ever so slightly. “My name is Mahvir.”

The introduction felt almost jarring, and he recalled the woman in the forest with the green eyes, and the severe Keeper asking him for his name. How was he to respond? He recalled clearly the **_hatred_** these Dalish had displayed for Fen’Harel in the memories before he’d woke with a shuddering gasp in a place he had not remembered falling asleep in. The Long Sleep was supposed to be eternal, but like all things, nothing truly endured.

Elvhenan was the dust beneath their heels, only the memories preserved in places deep within the Fade where no mortal dared to tread without fear of the unknown. He had nothing at all any longer, save the vanity of his own actions, it seemed.

His thoughts passed in an indiscernible moment, and he traced the shape of Mahvir’s face with his eyes, deliberately softening his expression into something less severe. “Solas,” he said at last. “My name is Solas.”

“Solas?” Mahvir placed a steady hand on his back to stead him. It felt rough and calloused even through the thin fabric of Solas’ shirt, belying the sort of life this young man had lived, though he was yet barely out of childhood. “An unusual name for a city Elf, but then again, nothing has really been typical about you so far. I suppose I’m not surprised.”

Before Solas could bother to respond, the lip of a shallow wooden bowl was pressed to his lips and he was swallowing a warm broth that tasted more satisfying in that moment than any feast in his youth ever had. His hand grasped Mahvir’s sleeve, and he quickly realized with no small amount of mortification that he had embarrassed himself by acting like a newborn desperate for milk.

He pulled away as if burned, unable to meet the eyes of his caretaker, who set the bowl on the floor and reached out to take Solas’ hands. Mahvir examined his wrists and fingers, and then frowned ever so slightly. “You weren’t bound. I had wondered, at first, if you had been kept there. And what you were holding.”

It was a jolt to realize that the Orb was missing, that he had not even noticed the absence of its humming warmth that had once been as familiar as breathing. He attempted to reach out with his magic, but he could sense nothing more than a dull throb of distant energy emanating from somewhere within the camp. The realization of how diminished he truly was, of how utterly **_different_** life was in this muddled world was…

“Are you alright? You look…” Solas looked up into the face of Mahvir, who was kneeling beside him, his dark brow knit together over his eyes. “Not well, though I suppose I shouldn’t really be surprised. Were you bound somehow? Maybe magic? Or was it something else? The artifact?”

“You certainly ask a great many questions,” Solas muttered, unable to help feeling pleased with the inquiries despite himself; they were not born of a spirit of interrogation, but of a genuine curiosity. “To be honest, I do not know the answer to all of them. I do not remember what I was doing in that ruin,” which, he supposed, was not technically a lie. “I only recall that the Orb was important, and that I had set myself the task of guarding it.”

“And nearly killed yourself in the process?” Mahvir’s eyebrows arched high. “That’s some kind of dedication.”

“I have been told I have an obsessive personality,” Solas replied, leaning back against the side of the _aravel_ and letting himself simply feel the various aches and pains in his body. “Apparently there is more merit to that assessment than I once thought.”

Mahvir said nothing for a long moment, reaching out to touch Solas’ hair. Solas could practically feel the other man frowning, though he was not looking at him and instead concentrated on his own breathing and the feeling of being a solid, physical creature tethered to his own body. He could think of little else beside his breathing and the Orb, which taunted him now as surely as any failure could. In the hand of these people, who knew nothing of it, it was even more useless than it was in his own hands; a considerable statement considering how far he had fallen from power.

“We’re going to need to shave it all off.”

“Excuse me?” Solas turned his head to look at Mahvir with what he was certain was no small amount of indignation written on his features.

The vestiges, perhaps, of an old vanity, or perhaps an equally vain desire to hold onto things that no longer mattered.

“It’s not healthy. It will never grow in healthy if you keep it,” Mahvir replied with a calm smile. “We need to shave it off if you ever want to have it this long again.”

Solas made a noise in the back of his throat, but nodded his assent. It had once been a part of his identity as clearly as The Wolf, a reminder that he was not like the others, at least not at his core, but he had a new identity now. Now he was faded and old, like aged vellum.

“Good. I’m going to get what we need ready. In the meantime, do you think you can finish the broth?” Mahvir motioned toward the bowl still sitting by his knees as he rose up on them. “I suggest drinking slowly. Your body might not be able to handle it otherwise.”

He slid across the floor of the aravel, though the ceiling was too low for him to stand, opened the latch on the side and slid out. For a moment, bright light and cool air greeted Solas’ before the door fell closed once more and left Solas alone with his thoughts, of which there were many.

Taking a breath, Solas conjured a small light in his hand simply to prove that he could and to feel the familiar hum of magic underneath his skin. It felt different now, distant in a way it hadn’t before when the air was thick with the energies of the Beyond, but it was similar enough to provide him some small comfort. For a moment he watched it, admiring the way the pale blue light cast shadows across the wooden planks and made the nearby fur dappled with light, before he snuffed it out. He couldn’t afford to waste the energy that he so desperately needed just to live.

The light sputtered out and he took the still warm bowl in hand, feeling the sanded wood against his skin. Solas contented himself with sipping until he heard voices outside of the _aravel_ , and the door swung open again.

Mahvir smiled at him, and then slipped inside, slinging Solas’ arm over his shoulder. “I’m going to take you to a tent. It’s roomier, for one, and actually cooler. I don’t want to catch your death of heat.”

He agreed silently that it was likely a good idea to move him, and assisted Mahvir in moving as best as he could. Despite his efforts, it still took them a shameful amount of time to get Solas situated, his worn linen shirt cast to the side as he sat underneath the canopy of a large tent

Mahvir sat behind him, humming a merry tune that Solas did not recognize, grasping Solas’ hair to away the long, matted strands with a razor. His hair hung loose about his face, brittle and dirty, and he recalled another haircut long ago, one that had made the hairs on the nape of his neck stand up from the subtlety of the magic that had curled around him.

Everything about this was physical, the razor cold against his head as it pressed impossibly close to his skin. Later it would burn, he thought, but the burning was nothing compared to how very empty and aching every hollow of his body was. As Mahvir pulled away, he absently reached up to touch the dome of his head and had the errant thought that he could maintain the shave better with magic than with a blade.

“Do you want to look?” Mahvir asked, distracting Solas’ roaming hands long enough for him to drop them back to his sides. “Personally, I think you’ll look quite dashing once you start to recover some of your weight.”

Solas snorted, but reached out to help Mahvir steady the flat of the blade so that he could look at his reflection. He nearly recoiled at the sight, but he was held by his own gaze, his eyes staring out from a face that had turned nearly skeletal with starvation. Everything about him looked older, aged far beyond what he had ever thought possible. Even distorted in the surface of the blade, he looked utterly unrecognizable as the man who had once attended banquets with swagger and a smile.

“You are being far too generous, Mahvir. I look like little more than a corpse.”

Mahvir’s hand, resting on his shoulder as a gesture of goodwill comfort, squeezed him gently in reassurance. Oddly enough, Solas actually found himself feeling reassured, perhaps unjustifiably so, in the odds of everything that had gone wrong for him in the last several thousand years.

“Nothing is forever, Solas. You’ll be back on your feet before you know it, and I’ll be with you ever step of the way.”

Solas, much to his own surprise, had no reason to doubt Mahvir’s words.­


End file.
